hearts with benevolent chearfulness; and when they are depreffed by misfortunes, let your humanity fympathife with their dif trefs, and your participation relieve their forrows. If they are happy, your fenfibility will make them more fo: if they are wretched, it will render them lefs miferable. It fhall therefore be the bufinefs of this difcourfe briefly to confider the nature, ufe, and neceffity of both thefe duties, and endeavour to recommend and enforce the practice of them.

With regard to the first of these, one would think there was no neceffity for any arguments to recommend, or any authority to enforce it; a command to love ourselves, to be eafy and happy, feems indeed fuperfluous; and yet as eafy as the injunction is, we shall not find it always complied with. Rejoicing with those that rejoice, though it be fo pleasant, fo profitable, fo amiable, is a duty notwithstanding which fome men never perform.

The proud man never performs it, because he thinks he has a right to all the applaufe that can be bestowed, and all the good fortune that can poffibly happen; he will not take a part, because he imagines himself intitled to the whole; he weeps therefore when he ought to rejoice, and complains when he ought to be thankful.

The envious man never performs this duty, Because he confiders his neighbour's happinefs, as his misfortune; and every addition to another's pleasure, as a diminution of his own. With him, therefore, to have merit, is to re

proach

reproach him for the want of it; to have honour and reputation, is to infult him; he looks upon no affront fo unpardonable as to be happy; no crime fo great against him, as to be fuccefsful.

The selfish man does not perform this duty, Because he does not think it one; he is grown callous and infenfible to every thing round him, and imagines that he is not in the leaft concerned in things foreign to his immediate intereft. Country, relations, frien lfhip, the connections of life, are things from which he is refolved to fit loofe: joy is a kind of commodity; he defires neither to lend or borrow; and he had rather ftarve by himself, than be indebted to fociety for its affiftance.

But let us turn the perfpective, and take a view of the good and benevolent man, who multiplies the gifts of Providence, and increases his pleasures by participation; who rejoiceth with all thofe that do rejoice, with his relations, his friends, his country, and his kind. He is lefs fenfible of his own calamities, for the part he bears in others happinefs; he can fcarce feel the weight of poverty or distress, whilst he has a worthy friend that profpers, a good and honeft neighbour that is fuccefsful; from the joy he receives in viewing the happiness of his fellow-creatures, he naturally endeavours to encrease them; he laughs at the malice of fortune, defpifes the cenfure of the vulgar, and rifes fuperior to adverfity.

When the mind is harmonized to peace and tranquillity, it naturally foftens into the mildness of compaffion, and opens to the dictates of humanity;

humanity; the circle of its pleafures is enlarg ed and expanded by beneficence; it will no longer be confined within the narrow limits of felf-love, but will exert its focial qualities, expatiate with freedom in the wide field of generofity, take in the whole range of nature, and, like the perfumes of the Eaft, diffufe its fweetnefs over every thing that falls within the large compass of its influence. This will double every pleasure, and leffen every calamity: it hath indeed the fame effect upon the mind of man, as the light of the fun on the various parts of the world; it throws a luftre on every object, gilds the face of nature, gives a glow to every colour, and brightens and beautifies the whole vifible creation.

Let us then endeavour to cultivate in ourfelves an humane and chcarful difpofition; it will double all our joys, and foften all our calamities; it is this difpofition to be pleafed and fatisfied with all that is about us, that alone. can render us amiable companions, generous and beneficent neighbours, thankful and pious Chriftians.

But the apoftle, in the latter part of my text, hath fubjoined also another duty, which, though of a very different nature, is, as I before obferved to you, as neceffary as the firft, and confequently as incumbent on every one of us, and that is, to weep with them that weep.

And as this is a duty incumbent upon all men, it is therefore a duty which all men, may very eafily perform; it doth not require any fuperior talents or accomplishments, and ex

traordinary

traordinary advantages of fortune, fame, or power. Compaffion is not confined or circumfcribed, but, like thofe misfortunes it was meant to alleviate, spreads itself through all ranks and degrees of men. To remove the poverty of the indigent, is the happy lot of the rich; to fuccour the oppreffed, is the glorious privilege of the great. The phyfician may affift nature, to throw off the disorders of the body; the philofopher may rectify the errors of the mind; thefe are offices adapted to circumftance, ftation, or profeffion; but the duty inculcated in the text, is the univerfal remedy to be administered by every hand, the grand specific against all the evils of life; and were it applied as conftantly and as univerfally as it ought to be, human nature would be relieved of half her burthen, and the rugged paths which fo obftruct our journey through this world would become smooth and paffable.

It is an old, but a very juft obfervation, that all our happiness and mifery arises in a great measure from comparison.

In penury therefore, in forrow, in fickness, and in age, the oppofite, the more defirable fituation of others, makes us more fenfible of our own misfortune, and reproaches us, as it were, with our infirmities. The kind and compaffionate friend, therefore, who generously attends and fympathifes with us, who feels for and partakes of our fufferings, banishes this uneafy fenfation, brings himfelf down upon the level with us, and by that means puts a stop to all those grating and cruel reflections

which are the natural attendants on bitterness and misfortune.

In thofe hours, and under thofe circumftances, where folitude is leaft acceptable, we are generally moft confined to it.

When a man is in pain, want, or adversity, his own thoughts are the worst companions in the world, and yet they are perhaps the only ones with which he has it in his power to affociate

This then is the time for friendship, true, difinterested friendship, to appear in its utmost perfection: through the darkness of affliction that jewel fhines in its greatest luftre: when the vain have left us, and the proud forfaken us, when the spirit itself is wounded, the friend fteps in to heal it, divides the forrow, and lays claim to a partnership in our affliction. This is Humanity, this is Virtue, this is Religion. If you kindly condefcend to footh his griefs, they will leffen by degrees: as the channel is divided, the ftream of forrow diminishes, and the burthen grows lighter by participation; he returns infenfibly to comfort; and when once he has proved your friendship, will foon admit of your confolation.

But that the two great and important duties inculcated in the text may want no motive or inducement to the conftant, fteady, and uniform practice of them, let us remember, that we are not only exhorted to them by the faithful apoftle and difciple of Chrift, but by Chrift himfelf; that thefe are duties which our bleffed Saviour did himself perform; that by our compliance